


Sick of Losing Soulmates

by offbrandgizmo



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Canon Compliant, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Platonic Alec/Lydia, Platonic Jace/Alec, Platonic Jace/Simon, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Soulmates, Self-Harm, Slow Burn, Soulmates, Trigger Warnings, but the other ships are there too, magnus and alec are the focus, many soulmate aus in the one story, probably, the storyline anyway
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-23 21:08:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10727277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/offbrandgizmo/pseuds/offbrandgizmo
Summary: It burned like a fire more vicious than anything he’d ever felt, taking, first, the breath from his lungs as he shot up in his bed, grasping at his chest, and barely left a moment for him to question what the hell was attacking him, before it consumed his skin, his bones, and his entire soul. It was like flames licking at every part of his being and slowly, voices began to work their way into his head, or as he would acknowledge later, a voice. And it got louder and louder until it was screaming.'Help me, please, it hurts, make it stop, make it go away.'And against his better judgement, Magnus could feel the pull inside of him, the longing part of his too-empty heart that called back, the part that wanted, with such strength, to help this voice, to ease their pain. But he couldn’t, and it continued, it raged on for minutes that were equal to the most painful of his years, and only when he gave in did it let up.And Magnus found himself thinking, without truly meaning to, 'It’s okay, I’ll help, it doesn’t have to hurt anymore, I’m here.'





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Just a note before we begin, this is based almost purely on the TV show, as I have yet to read the books. I know some details about the books that might creep in, but it's mostly show-knowledge.
> 
> Also, I'm clearly a Dodie fan, hit me up if you are as well! The song doesn't exactly relate to the tone of the writing or anything, but it felt like the right fit for Magnus' situation!
> 
> Enjoy!

Magnus Bane knew better than anyone how different soulmate bonds manifested themselves between lovers. For the first, _what_ , few hundred years of soulmates? He’d remained optimistic, told himself that everything happened for a reason, that this was just the universe’s way of eventually leading him to the true love of his life. _True love cannot die_ , he would tell himself on the worst nights.

But time had its way of taking a toll, and eventually, whether it had been the natural death of yet another mortal lover, or one of the numerous who had chosen to leave him behind—each for their own unforgettably significant reasons—he was ultimately led to his breaking point. He did, however, undeniably know that it was Camille’s betrayal that had wrecked him the most, left him as nothing more than, as he’d said repeatedly to Ragnor during his many drunken nights of ‘healing’, “the physical manifestation of a broken heart bleeding out on the undeserving perfect hardwood floors I exhausted myself creating all for a soulless—”

His friend, bless his heart, would always stop him somewhere around there.

He was certain he’d experienced his fair share of variation when it came to the manifestation of soulmate bonds. He’d never forget his first, even despite having long since lost any true indication that the red string had ever been attached to his finger. He’d never forget the colourful tattoos, or the first and last words that were once imprinted on his skin, or even the brief, short-lived almost-romance during which one of his eyes was a stark green—he never did get to find out whether the right eye of his soulmate, somewhere in the world, was his own natural brown or the yellow cat eyes he hid close to his heart. He didn’t want to think of the scenarios that would have prevented him from ever meeting the soul behind that particular manifestation—they were all far too dark.

He’d seen telepathy, had the colours sucked from his world until he finally laid eyes on yet another love, and once had initials that rested in swirls beneath the soles of his shoes. Not even the timer that displayed his soulmate’s impending death could have prepared him for the whirlwind romance that had been snatched from him all too soon—that was the one thing they all had in common. It was _always_ too soon.

And yet, the red string had long since frayed away, all tattoos and words, first and last alike, had faded from his skin. His eyes had, eventually, returned to the dull brown, and he’d stopped hearing other voices inside of his head. His world had returned from monochrome, and as time wore on, all indications that he’d ever had a soulmate were slowly but surely erased. If he didn’t have such a strong faith in his memory, it could have driven him mad. Sometimes it almost did, but he knew the pain of constant visible reminders would have hurt far worse, and far more.

Since Camille, there had been no one. He’d witnessed it, during his many lifetimes, but only after her betrayal had he ever experienced the true fragility of the soulmate bonding first hand. Because one’s soulmate didn’t have to die for the bond to fade—all it took was for one half of the pairing to just _stop believing_. And after Camille, all of Magnus’ belief and faith and hope… they were sucked dry. There one day and just… gone the next.

At first, he found that he didn’t even have to try that hard to resist the pull of his would-be soulmates. He didn’t feel bad—he knew that they’d probably all find others; it certainly wasn’t as if any one person had only one ‘perfect’ match, he was living proof of that, and none of the matches were truly perfect. But he wasn’t alone in his sentiments.

So many others, he discovered, were against the concept of soulmates, and there was an entire movement built around resisting them. Some even opposed the idea to such an extent that they would allow fate to bring them together with their soulmate, but would break the bond and attempt to break the heart of their soulmate so badly that they would also come to despise the notion of losing the freedom of their choice. Magnus had enough experience to know that that wasn’t the case. You always have a choice, even where soulmates are concerned. But what he saw, it was like this whole vicious, rebellious movement to convert everyone to the anti-soulmate way of thinking.

Magnus had distanced himself from that fairly quickly, the idea almost sickening the part of him that still longed to love, and he knew the movement had long since died away. It was nothing more than little-known history, now. Everything was history in the end.

But as the loveless years wore on, and he spent his time in the beds and arms of others without soulmates, whether they’d suffered a loss or a betrayal of their own, or simply refused the idea, he’d never entertained the prospect that there would eventually be a soulmate bond that would be too strong for even him to resist.

But one night, there was.

It burned like a fire more vicious than anything he’d ever felt, taking, first, the breath from his lungs as he shot up in his bed, grasping at his chest, and barely left a moment for him to question _what the hell_ was attacking him, before it consumed his skin, his bones, and his entire soul. It was like flames licking at every part of his being and slowly, voices began to work their way into his head, or as he would acknowledge later, _a_ voice. And it got louder and louder until it was _screaming_.

_Help me, please, it hurts, make it stop, make it go away._

And against his better judgement, Magnus could feel the pull inside of him, the longing part of his too-empty heart that called back, the part that wanted, with such strength, to help this voice, to ease their pain. But he couldn’t, and it continued, it raged on for minutes that were equal to the most painful of his years, and only when he gave in did it let up.

And Magnus found himself thinking, without truly meaning to, _it’s okay, I’ll help, it doesn’t have to hurt anymore, I’m here_.

As he came to, slowly, he found himself sitting in his bed, bent over as his lungs shook him with the full force of their search for breath. And the burning slowly ebbed away until there was just a dull throb in the back of his mind and he registered slight stinging somewhere on his hips. The more coherent his thoughts and vision became, the more he realised that the ache in his mind was actually an overwhelmingly muted feeling of pain. As he focused on it, he could feel each emotion rushing through him, _pain, longing, shame, desperation, fear, hope_ , but the more he let it in, the more he realised that it wasn’t _him_. He wasn’t feeling this. Someone else was.

It took him longer than he’d care to admit to realise that this wasn’t an altogether unfamiliar feeling. Sure, his soulmates had never manifested in this manner, nor ever with such strength, but he knew the connection. He knew how that felt, and this was it. This was that.

He was out of his bed and storming into the adjacent bathroom before he even caught up with his own movement. With the realisation that he’d let a soulmate in came floods of _anger_ and _pain_ and _loss_ and above all else he was just so, so _furious_ and then, shattering through everything else and colliding with his chest came the _guilt_.

 _Oh god,_ the _guilt._

He found his hands grasping for something inside of him again, and when he looked up, coming face to face with himself in the mirror, he saw it all in his eyes. Everything that had happened in the last, what, five minutes? Ten? It was all right there, resting there like a film over the walls he’d kept up for every moment between Camille and now.

And the longer he looked, everything became clearer _and_ hazier. He could tell that the guilt was his, but it was also theirs. His soulmate’s. The emotion had come across so strongly between them that it was so innately shared and he watched as everything else faded and his face softened in the mirror. He let himself turn and drop to lean against the counter, hand still to his chest.

 _I’m sorry._ He tested.

Silence, and then, _so am I._

He couldn’t fathom what they could possibly have to be sorry about when the voice came back across the bond. But then, he realised, they must have felt it too—the fire, the _pain_ of the bond manifesting itself. What had caused it? Magnus had been asleep, and the more he thought about it, the more he realised that it must have been them—his soulmate.

But then, what had happened to them to have brought on emotion and pain so strong that it had broken through everything Magnus had worked to build for centuries? He couldn’t imagine, and moreso, he didn’t want to.

He decidedly threw the anger to the side, surmising to deal with it later, and he sat there, almost feeling in line with his soulmate, as if they were somehow parallel, somewhere in the world. As if they weren’t just _there_ with him, but they _were_ him. And he was them.

He didn’t know who or what they were, where they were, why it had been them, after all these years. But he couldn’t find it in himself to try and answer any of the questions circling his brain. He felt exhausted, so, so tired, and he felt himself drifting in and out of consciousness sitting there on the tiles, but he couldn’t find the will to move. His last thought before he really fell into darkness was whether it was his own exhaustion or that of his soulmate keeping him there.

*

When he woke, the bond was nowhere near as strong. It was there, somehow muted in the back of his mind and there was a strength to his heart that he hadn’t felt in as long as he could truly remember, but there were no indications of voices in his head or emotions being passed to him—though, actually, the closer he focused, the more he could feel it, and it _was_ there.

There, somewhere in his head or heart, was the faint ebb of something like determination, and as he let himself bleed into it, he felt it bleeding back into him. He used it to pull himself up from the tiles, and to turn back to the mirror, where he saw no sign in his eyes of the previous night, just dark circles that hinted at an ill sleep—he was quick to magic them away.

And as he let the very faint feelings of his soulmate fill his being, he felt a hum of content crossing through. He wasn’t sure if it was him, or his soulmate—or was it both of them?—but he let it remain; almost like the soft ever-present purr you could feel when you rested your hand on a cat’s chest.

It felt like home.

And as he stared into his own eyes, noting that he somehow did seem smaller than he’d ever previously observed, Magnus conceded.

He could really use home again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, a few notes for clarity.
> 
> In this particular universe of soulmates, as described in this little introduction, it's easy to deny soulmate bonds by simply refusing to accept them. Not necessarily a bad thing, just something some people do.  
> There are also, as you've probably gathered, no limits to the ways in which soulmate bonds manifest. Everything is a possibility, and it's not altogether uncommon for anyone to have multiple (though more than two is odd) soulmates--often one will be platonic and the other romantic.
> 
> I truly hope that you enjoyed this, please let me know what you thought and if you wish me to continue. Hopefully I have enough self-motivation to be able to continue it regardless, but comments always help, knowing people with voices are reading!
> 
> Also, this will focus on Malec, but I'll have some chapters that center around others! Saphael is everything to me <3
> 
> Thanks for reading, sorry for being so long-winded!
> 
> \- Alex.


	2. Prologue, Somewhere Else

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alec always believed he didn't have a soulmate, and he knew all the worst reasons why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning: emotionally graphic thoughts of self harm, mostly metaphors or similes, but some physically graphic details

It happened when he was sixteen.

Alec had been born without any obvious physical indications of a soulmate, but with so many people also in his position, he didn’t really think much of it until the age of nine, when he first started to really question why he didn’t have a mark like Izzy’s, but she’d quelled his fears, even though she was so much younger than he was. But when he was thirteen, and in the same year both Jace and Max had joined their family, and both Jace and Max had marks of their own to bear, Alec had started his slow but certain descent.

And so he threw everything he had into everything _else_ he could possibly focus on—taking care of his family, winning the approval of his parents, getting better and stronger and becoming the best leader he could possibly be. _Maybe one day becoming good enough for a soulmate._ But still, thoughts came at him when he least expected it in the form of reasons, perfectly, seemingly logical reasons as to why he didn’t have a soulmate.

After going through so many years of his life thinking he must be better off alone, he must be his strongest without a soulmate, he must be unworthy in some way, (or even holding onto the hope that maybe, _maybe_ , Jace would be the one, as if he didn’t already know that Jace had dark, curling first words scrawled around his thigh, first words that were most certainly not his), it was safe to say that Alec was no stranger to the pain of hopelessness.

But they never stopped. He was always wondering, questioning, hoping that maybe, maybe, maybe…

_Oh, the maybes._

But he knew that, _“Hey, can you watch where you’re going?”_ , were definitely not the first words he had said to Jace, and that there was very, very little chance that he’d wake up one day with some indication of his having a soulmate. After all, there was no way his theoretical soulmate could be more than thirteen years younger than him (and as he grew, so, too, did that number, _fourteen, fifteen, sixteen_...).

He knew, he _knew_ that there was really no way he could ever have a soulmate.

So why did he still have so much _hope_? He considered that maybe it wasn’t hope anymore but rather a distorted but familiar blend of longing and something else he could never quite bring himself to identify. He knew he couldn’t afford to dwell on his feelings regardless.

And even as he tried to be happy for them, Alec knew he’d always harbor some unwilling resentment for his siblings (because _yes_ , he maintained, _Jace is basically my brother_ ) and their clear future with their perfect other halves. Or, as the Clave would say, the key to their true strength—so long, of course, as they were a fellow Shadowhunter, and so long as you didn’t care _too_ much. They didn’t believe in the strength of having someone to fight for—the only some _thing_ that Shadowhunters could afford was their cause, and to their cause Alec knew he must be faithful.

But the knowledge of his own innate resentment only made him resent himself even more.

And, he supposed, it had ultimately been only a matter of time before the negative emotions would pile up and boil over. That was why only half of his mind had been surprised when, suddenly, he found himself in his room at the Institute at sixteen, a fist curled up in his hair as he pulled, pulled, _pulled_ , as if maybe enough pressure on his hair would result in it all ripping away from his scalp and then he’d tear himself completely apart and not have to exist anymore, not have to hear them.

He was certain he’d never admit that they were almost like the voices of everyone around him, all mixed up with his own voice, and that they all sounded so frustratingly the same and he could never decipher who was speaking and why and who was right and who was real—in the end, he’d given up trying and decided that, if they were in his mind, they must all be at least somewhat real.

_You’re not good enough to be a Shadowhunter._

_You’re not good enough to one day run this institute._

_You’re not good enough to be Jace’s parabatai._

_You’re not a good enough son, or a good enough brother, or a good enough leader, or a good enough soldier._

_You are not enough._

_Why do you think you don’t have a soulmate, anyway?_

It was always teasing, almost jovial, yet somehow still so sure and matter-of-fact, and he quickly realised that pulling at his hair was never going to be enough, and so his fists found their way to the skin on his stomach, hitting for a reason he wasn’t truly aware of. Was it that he wanted to hurt, or was it that he wanted to knock all the breath from his lungs?

He’d register later on that this was his first panic attack, but in the moment, nothing could have prepared him for the danger he was facing—and all from himself. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew it’d haunt him in the aftermath, that he couldn’t even protect or control himself. But, wasn’t that what had caused all of his problems in the first place? Was it all just an endless, unbreakable cycle?

All at once his mind stopped, all the too-many questions ceased and suddenly there was one prevalent thought. It wasn’t safe and something was telling him, somewhere inside, that it was a bad thought, one he should _not_ listen to, but the way it was so, so sure of itself, so solid, so much louder and clearer than anything he’d thought in months, so—

Pain.

He needed _pain_.

There was a shadowed voice, a muted voice, almost _screaming_ that _he was already in pain!_ But nothing could get any louder than the voice that took him towards the desk drawer, towards the small metal sharpener, towards the bed and eventually left him with a thin piece of sharp metal facing upwards in his palm—well, he supposed, it’s not really facing _upwards_ , it doesn’t have an upwards. But that didn’t mean it didn’t feel as though it was staring at him with the eyes of all the voices he’d been hearing in his mind.

_Nobody has to know_ , he thought—though he would one day come all the way back to this thought and realise that it wasn’t really _him_ thinking it, was it? It wasn’t really him thinking any of this. And yet.

_I’m smart,_ he thinks, _nobody will notice anything on my hips. I can cover it up with runes, if I need to. That’s the safest place._

_That’s the safest place. Safety. Safe. Safe._

_Safe._

It was like a hundred different nerves all at once kicking into action, and for a moment, a brief, split-second moment, he felt the slight chill in the air as it mixed with the humidity of his own nervous sweat, he felt the cold of the metal and each layer of skin slipping apart as it broke, he felt the shiver that racked its way up his body from his toes to the tips of his eyelids, he felt the drumming of his own heart in his ears, and then finally, _finally_ …

He felt absolutely nothing.

And if that wasn’t the most relieving thing he’d experienced in months, he didn’t know what was.

It was such a strong emptiness, such a potent nothing, that it couldn’t be ignored. Just the same way the voices couldn’t be ignored, this was all-encompassing and totally commanding, in total control. And it was _him_ , wasn’t it? Which meant—and he drank the thought up with all its delicious satisfaction—that _he was in control._

He never could have predicted how quickly it would slip from his fingers.

But, just as the razor slipped from his hand onto the bed below, he felt himself almost _convulse_ with the sudden onslaught of _fire_. _Fire, fire, fire!_ But he couldn’t see it, where was it, why couldn’t he get away from it?

He sprung forward with all of his strength only to end up sprawled on the floor beside the bed, the blood from his hips staining a part of the carpet as he writhed— _back and forth, make it stop_ —until he finally propped himself up against the bed, one hand habitually wrapped around his opposite bicep, an arm covering the place where his heart rested beneath his skin, providing the only solid and defensive thing he could think of in the moment, because even when he curled in on himself, tears springing entirely involuntarily from his eyes as he clenched them shut in harmony with his own hand probably bruising his upper arm, it was _still there_. _Still there, still there, still there_.

And with the lack of physical movement he found his mind taking over, all of the usual voices chorusing together to send him into even more of a full-blown panic, a panic that forced its way down his throat and wrapped its large hands around his lungs, squeezing them tightly and making him wheeze, struggling desperately to catch his breath, catch it, catch it, catch—

He kept trailing off, as if drifting between consciousness and unconsciousness, and the only thing keeping him tethered to awareness, with the weakest hold he’d ever experienced, were the thoughts, and he had no choice but to let in everything he’d been fighting, because they were _keeping him alive_.

And so, he let them flood his head as his body tried to combat the burning, the incomprehensible burning that was coursing through his every vein, organ, nerve, bone.

_Help me, please, it hurts, make it stop, make it go away._

He chanted it like a mantra in his head, no more aware of what it was that he was saying than conscious of the passing time—it felt like _hours_.

And as he started to succumb to the dark haze that surrounded him, letting it pull at him from all directions, tugging and tearing him apart— _because wasn’t this what he’d wanted?_ —something else was there, prodding at his mind, jerking him awake again and forcing his eyes to open against the harshness of the dull light of his room and _keeping_ him there, steadying him. He reached out and grabbed it with all the force he could muster, his body lurching forward as if his brain needed a physical compensation for the battle going on inside of his head.

And then he found it.

He _finally_ found it.

_It’s okay, I’ll help, it doesn’t have to hurt anymore, I’m here_.

Alec couldn’t decide whether the voice sounded like honey because it really did, or if it just seemed that way because of the _calm_ it brought him. Oh, the relief, the calm, the quiet.

_Quiet_. He let the sound reverberate from one end of his mind straight through to the other, revelling in the peace it was layering across his destructive subconscious. He hadn’t heard the sound of _quiet_ , not like this, not for so, _so_ unbearably long.

But as quickly as it had come, it began to slowly fade away, and as he tried to grasp onto it, desperately, he felt it slipping right through his fingers like sand. Everything was becoming too much all over again but he wanted to be okay, he needed to be okay, he was going to be okay—and just like that, he came to the realisation. All at once, all of the secret research he’d done over the years, discovering all the ways in which soulmate bonds manifested themselves, the accounts he’d seen about telepathy and shared pain, it all led him to this moment, and a single phrase shut out everything else in his head.

_I have a soulmate._

He was almost too stunned for tears to make their way down his cheeks— _almost_. But he didn’t notice the wetness even as it hit his bare chest, because all he could think, see, hear, feel—it was all just that. _I have a soulmate._

Later he’d begin the internal battle over whether he’d always been destined for this soulmate, or if he had, indeed, finally become enough for them. For a while, the part of him—the very dominant part—that pressed that he still needed to be good enough for them would win, it would consume his entire being. But for now, all he could think of, as though it was a breath of air after months of not breathing, was that they existed. _They exist._

But still, almost more abruptly and almost more strongly than the fire from before, as if his breath was a flame and anger was meant to snuff it out, his veins and bones and skin and mind were all flooded with a _fury_. He was _furious_. So angry that his tears persisted. But somehow, perhaps because of how unfamiliar it was to feel anger directed anywhere but at himself, he realised that it wasn’t him.

_Oh god. His soulmate must hate him._

He really was, this time, too stunned for the tears, and he felt everything inside of him freeze.

_My soulmate doesn’t want me._

He felt his shoulders shrink forward, and his practiced act of becoming small was starting all over again.

_I’m not a good enough soulmate. I never will be._

And as his guilt fought to push out the anger, he eventually, slowly, painfully, almost throbbing back and forward, felt a more unfamiliar kind of guilt flowing into him, flowing into his own. Before long, it was as if the feeling was a physical tether between himself and his soulmate, because they were feeling it too, and that only made him feel guiltier, because _he_ made them feel that, and it cycled back around endlessly, flawlessly.

The silence returned, but this time, Alec knew he’d rather be anywhere else.

Until, after what felt like so long that he was certain he’d lost his soulmate at his very first chance, he heard it again, the voice, the honey, the soothing warmth that came over him when he heard it.

_I’m sorry_.

And Alec was, again, stunned.

When had anybody ever said sorry to him like this? Sure, if someone accidentally ran into him or hurt him or did something wrong, they’d apologise. The words themselves weren’t foreign, but the meaning behind them was.

His soulmate had done nothing wrong, and yet, here they were, apologising as though they’d done nothing _but_.

Alec couldn’t stand it. He was used to feeling as though he needed to be punished. He couldn’t stand how the words _I’m sorry_ made him feel. He couldn’t stand hearing his soulmate say them.

But he stilled himself. Urged himself to remain quiet.

_So am I._ He threw it into his thoughts, hoping absently that it would make its way to his soulmate, and he slowly felt himself returning to his own body again, but he felt weighted to the floor, even as the stinging of his hips came back and he remembered, distantly, the events of the last half hour.

It was as if, though, the distinctly familiar _longing_ and _fear_ of his soulmate were preventing him from feeling anything but warm. He couldn’t bring himself, whether emotionally, physically or mentally speaking, to feel guilty about his actions.

All he could do was wait, letting his eyes slip shut, still propped against the bed as he felt the darkness wash over him—and for the first time in years, it felt so, _so_ _warm_.

*

When he woke, Alec knew only one thing, had only one real, driving thought. And drive him it would—for almost six years.

_He had to become enough for his soulmate._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that this took a little while! I do feel that this chapter was a bit skewed and weak in some areas, and I tried to improve upon that, but I'm not sure how well it went. I hope you still enjoyed it, let me know (comments make my life, honestly, even if it's just a single word).
> 
> After this, we'll move into the events of the show, I believe, unless I have a whim for something else!
> 
> \- Alex.


End file.
